Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wire grid polarizer capable of obtaining high brightness and reducing the number of processes, a liquid crystal device including the wire grid polarizer, and a method of manufacturing the wire grid polarizer.
Discussion of the Related Art
In general, a polarizer or a polarizing element refers to an optical element which extracts straight-light polarized light, having a certain vibration direction, from non-polarized light such as natural light. A wire grid polarizer which is one of the kinds of the optical element is an optical element which produces polarized light using conductive wire grids. The wire grid polarizer has been used as a reflection type polarizer useful in the wavelength range of the infrared region because it has a higher polarization separation characteristic than other polarizers.
A process of forming the wire grid polarizer includes 6 to 7 processes, such as a process of depositing metal on a substrate, a photoresist coating process, a photolithography process, a photoresist development process, a metal layer etch process, and a photoresist strip process. Accordingly, there are problems in that the time and the costs are increased.
Further, the most important factor to determine the performance of the wire grid polarizer is the relationship between the wavelength of incident light and the interval between wire grids. That is, if the pitch of the wire grid is not small enough, desired effects are difficult to obtain because the incident light is not polarized, but diffracted. As described above, important factors in the polarization characteristic of the wire grid polarizer include the pitch of the wire grid and the width and height of the wire grid. It is, however, difficult to control the width and height of the wire grid using the existing process.